


does santa claus have to go through customs?

by r1ker



Category: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Genre: Other, it's christmas time y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 08:17:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5490170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r1ker/pseuds/r1ker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>spies celebrate the holiday season much like the rest of us do</p>
            </blockquote>





	does santa claus have to go through customs?

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't felt christmassy all week and part of it's me feeling terrible so i wrote my faves having a good christmas season bc why not
> 
> title from that little kid from home alone

The IMF’s first official team Christmas is a little hard to arrange.

 

One thing is, they all decide to start making holiday plans about four days before the big holiday. Jane wants to do something for all the guys of her team. She’s thinking dinner, presents, forcing Ethan to sit through not one but two Peanuts movies. There are grand plans to be put into place if you had to ask her.

 

First she finds out what they’ll all be doing the night of the 24th. Ethan says he’ll be sleeping through most of it (the week before they had all spent a harrowing ten days in Tunisia), Will and Benji look at each other then shake their heads in Jane’s direction.

 

So then, Jane decides she’ll be doing a little Christmas shopping for the guys. Based on what she knows, she makes a rather lengthy list, checks it twice. Benji looks terribly easy to shop for; he’s got the tastes of her 23-year-old brother, so he gets a few DVD sets and a trip, on her, to GameStop. Will’s a tougher nut to crack so she settles for some new shoes, a handmade gun holster since his went by the way of the Thames months before.

 

Ethan’s where she hits the biggest bump in the shopping road.

 

He’s always been so secretive about what he likes outside of work that she actually had to break into his apartment to see just what Ethan Hunt likes to do in his spare time. In his bookcases she finds books on drawing. On his nightstand are dollar-store notepads and jagged pens and pencils tucked into their spines. There are a bunch of drawings in there, mostly stray eyes and hands for practice, but in the back pages of the notepads she finds little pictures of them all. Her favorites are the ones of Benji, Ethan’s best friend no doubt.

 

She smiles as her fingers skim over the little sketches, and it’s then that she decides to get Ethan some new drawing materials for Christmas.

 

The next day, after the five of them have shared breakfast at a diner where Jane has a religious experience by way of a cinnamon roll waffle, she gives Luther instructions to take Ethan out for a day on the town. _Take him for a movie, pedicure, anything you can think of to keep him out of my hair just long enough to get his Christmas gifts,_ she instructs to Luther’s understanding and stiff nod. With that Luther whisks Ethan away, parting glance towards the rest of his team filled with fear.

 

She loads up Benji and Brandt, them sitting in the back seat of her Expedition like obedient younger brothers, and heads out to a new art supply store on the edge of town.

 

“I think he needs some sort of drawing technique book too,” Benji says once they’ve made it to the store, Jane pulling in to park the car near the back. “He’s good at it, sure, but he might want to branch out. Those drawings of Lane and Ilsa were good, no doubt.”

 

Jane nods and gets out, walks into the store confident in her ability to gift-shop for her friend. Benji and Brandt walk behind her, poking around supplies near the front of the store. She finds a few things that instantly go into her shopping bag – fine pencils that are special enough to come with their own sharpener, small tipped pens she thinks would be good for detailing any more faces he felt like sketching, and a couple of nice, heavy paper pads that wouldn’t bleed and distort like the cheaper ones Ethan was accustomed to.

 

Benji tosses in a bright canvas pouch that would be good for holding all the supplies Jane’s gotten him. He even springs to have Ethan’s name put on the inside should the wrong hands get ahold of it. A neat little monogram of _EMH_ is done in black string on the inside and while they wait, Jane looks around for other things to toss in. There’s a little novelty section of the store and there she finds some cute little gag gifts, pencil socks and a coffee mug printed to look like an artist’s palette.

 

It all comes out to much more than she had budgeted for but she honestly couldn’t care less; Ethan’s done enough for the team in the last twelve months to merit much more than what he’s sacrificed. She takes them next to a Walgreens for packing material and a nice card, favorite Christmas candy of his that he almost buys in bulk before the holiday season is over and it goes away, and a pair of candy cane socks she thought would be especially fitting for him.

 

The candy, art supplies, and little trinkets get thrown into a particularly huge gift bag with a charming Santa Mickey on the front, and stuffed with red and white tissue paper to the gills to conceal its contents. She puts it beneath the tree in the IMF meeting room, alongside 18,000 other gifts for the team, and waits patiently for the night of the 24th.

 

It comes and again they do a team dinner, this time at a home-cooking restaurant she went out of her way to find so that way they’d have the full effect of being a big holiday family, and return to HQ for gifts. Benji’s sitting by the Christmas tree, legs crossed and a bag of peanut brittle in his lap, Santa hat bobbing as he listens to the Christmas music piping in from Bluetooth speakers in the ceiling.

 

Will lies out fully on the sofa next to the tree, stuffed from dinner and not bothered to do much outside of lounging. Ethan’s a little wound up, lingering by the tree as if he’s intruding on something. Jane coaxes him to sit down along with the rest of them and she dives in, grabbing the first box and handing it to an eager Benji.

 

Benji rips into the present, tossing aside wrapping paper Jane took a little too much care in arranging, and gives a surprised yell once he reveals the first three _Star Wars_ movies partnered up with the second season of _Star Trek: The Next Generation,_ the ones he’d wanted for a while. He leans over and wraps both arms around Jane’s neck like a monkey, squeezing her and she hugs him right back. The brother she never had and never knew she wanted, she’s always told people about him.

 

“After this is all said and done,” Benji says, one hand moving over the pile of presents, “we’re all watching this. I don’t care if I have to tie you all down, you are getting in on this fine sci-fi action with me.” Ethan smiles and claps Benji on the shoulder. However Jane can see something outside of the presents is bothering Ethan; he doesn’t acknowledge the fact that while his friends are getting things, there are indeed presents in that pile for him.

 

“Alright, buddy, you get one,” Benji tells Ethan, heaving over the impressive gift bag from Jane and the rest of them. Ethan sits down by the tree and takes it hesitantly and tries to look inside, but can see nothing past the mound of tissue paper. He pulls it out and lets it cloud around him as he works to get inside.

 

He gets just far enough to see the top of the presents and stops, takes his hand out of the back and looks at Jane with tears in his eyes. He laughs, pretends to shrug that little choked expression off, and tugs out the sketchpads and drawing utensils. His face threatens to break as he lays it all out in front of his legs, sees just how far his friends went to satisfy one of his hobbies. However his mirth is further amplified by a second glance into the bag, and he smiles at the sight of the candy gently stuffed into the artsy mug and socks.

 

“Well, do you like it?” Jane asks and she smiles hard enough to make her face ache when Ethan nods, still a little upset alongside his excitement, unzipping the bag with the pens and pencils in it.

 

“I think this is the best thing I’ve ever gotten for Christmas,” he says, voice cracking, “outside of the Big Wheel I got sometime in the late sixties.” The group laughs, gathers more of his gifts around his crossed legs. In due time he opens up new pajamas and a leather jacket from Luther, a set of boots that leave him wondering where in the CIA budget Will got the money to pay for them, and a gag gift of a propeller hat he only expected out of Benji (the real gift is in an envelope in Ethan’s stocking, tickets for the two of them to go to the Broncos game in Oakland next month, along with skybox access).

 

Jane’s gift still gets to him as he opens his other presents, taking time in between opening them to glance at the bag filled with things he never anticipated. Jane catches him scribbling in one of the pads when she gets to open her presents, his eyes darting to wherever the tip of the pencil takes him, and although they all try on separate instances to get his attention he doesn’t budge.

 

Once all the gifts are opened and appreciated, wrapping material discarded in an industrial sized garbage bag, the team settles into various chairs and couches for Benji’s promised marathon of his new DVD’s. Ethan hesitantly opens his bag of peppermint bark and takes more care than is necessary to unwrap a few pieces to eat. The opening theme to _A New Hope_ sounds and Ethan watches raptly, almost as if it’s not his fiftieth time to see the movie courtesy of being Benji’s best friend for twenty years.

 

He looks over at aforementioned best friend to see him with his head on Brandt’s shoulder. His eyes narrow when he spots one of Will’s hands high up on Benji’s thighs – _might not want to get too handsy_ , he thinks protectively, then dismisses himself thinking how Benji’s grown and fully able to decide things like this. Ethan turns his attention back to the movie, watching the flat screen burst in glorious color courtesy of the Galactic Empire, and he feels at home.

 

 


End file.
